If we owned a monkey that was trained to read and operate a camera, then we could sit back and geocache while said pet monkey did the challenges. Unfortunately we don't have a monkey let alone one that could read and operate a camera, so for now I have been filling in for the monkey nicely. Why I am doing them is beyond me, guess so far they have been so easy, a monkey can do them, so I do them. Kathy!!! we are out of bananas.

There is of course a long way for them to go to improve, but I have to admit I like the concept. For example, the challenge in Murphy Hanrehan Park is, to me, a great implementation of this challenge feature. Instead of cachers walking across mountain bike trails to get to a cache, it actually challenges cachers to BIKE on the mountain bike trail. That to me seems ligitimate.

"Drive down Lombard Street" could be a good challenge and is no different than if an old virtual would have been placed there. In fact, there is a cache there that is often muggled, so a challenge might not be a bad idea for that location.

The peer review allows for some pretty crummy challenges. If cachers can take it a little seriously, find a place that is fun to bring cachers to, and make a very specific challenge, this can be good. Vague or uninteresting challenges will put us right back to what people disliked about old virtual caches.

Can someone point me to the background on removing virtual caches in the first place? They had already been dropped when we started in mid-2006, but for the most part, the ones we've done made sense, much like these challenges could if implemented with some forethought.

I keep hearing that they were getting "pointless," and granted we've done a handful like that, but by and large, the ones we've done have been really great and made sense in the locations they took us.

Can someone point me to the background on removing virtual caches in the first place? They had already been dropped when we started in mid-2006, but for the most part, the ones we've done made sense, much like these challenges could if implemented with some forethought.

I don't recall for sure, but I believe it was related to the fact that geocaching is about finding hidden containers._________________Hmm...